– By Fenton Wright, Web Services Coordinator
Who: Car Seat Headrest and Vundabar
Where: MGM Music Hall at Fenway
When: Saturday, September 27, 2025
Car Seat Headrest has been one of the most important bands in my life. If you’ve ever heard their music, then you would understand the amount of anger, sadness, and angst that they are able to capture in every single song.
Every single kind of Car Seat Headrest fan was at MGM Music Hall. From people like myself who started listening in 2020, to older fans, to furrys crowd surfing during certain songs. Their Scholars tour was the first time that I was able to see them live, and is an experience that I will never forget.
Vunderful Opener
As we all made our way to the floor, Boston’s own Vundabar took the stage. If you have never heard Vundabar’s music before, then I can best describe them as an indie rock-jazz fusion. Their music caught me completely off guard. Each time the bass player, Zack Abramo, played a chord, I could feel it in my throat, almost like it was compelling me to dance and sing to lyrics that I didn’t even fully know!
Even if everyone did not know every song that Vundabar played, it made us all realize what we were missing out on. The one song that we knew without fail, “Alien Blues,” was played a bit differently. Rather than being this fast-paced epic rock song, Vundabar slowed down the tempo. This made the song even more beautiful, and the lyrics come across as more intimate.
Throughout their set, Vundabar continually expressed how much they love the city of Boston. They took breaks in between songs to do things like thank the crowd, or even bark at us a couple of times, setting off a chain reaction of barks throughout the crowd. Vundabar got us going and ready for Car Seat Headrest.
Don’t Forget Your Water
Before Car Seat Headrest took the stage, there was a 20 minute water break intermission. Throughout the venue, there was audio being played constantly reminding us to drink water. The voice pretended to be artists like Olivia Rodrigo or Benson Boone reminding us to take our own health into consideration while preparing for the main act.
Both New…
As smoke filled MGM Music Hall, we all waited with baited breath to see Will Toledo and the rest of the band take stage. I didn’t care about water anymore, or what shirt I was eyeing in the merch line. All I could think about was how I was about to witness one of the most important parts of my high school years live for the first time ever. When the band took the stage, a roar erupted from the audience, and the opening of “CCF (I’m Gonna Stay With You)” began.
The fast tapping of the symbols, the keyboard, which accentuated the sense of urgency that takes over you at the beginning of The Scholars, took over my body. As Will Toledo’s voice began to permeate throughout the hall, thousands of other voices joined him. We all shouted out, “I’m gonna stay with you!”
At the end of the first song, the band took time to have a conversation with the crowd about, of course, the Red Sox. As they said, one of the best parts about being in Boston is being able to say the opposing teams name and everyone in the building beginning to boo!
When they played one of my favorite songs off the new album, “Lady Gay Approximately,” the lights dimmed, and only a single white light shined through the back of the band. They slowed it down, a song that is already whimsical and medieval in nature. A slower tempo live gave this song a dark fantasy feel to it that makes it all the more pleasant. Many of Car Seat Headrest’s songs are tragedies, but the juxtaposition of the tone of the instruments with the happy ending of this song make it perfect. It is also the only acoustic song on the album.
By far the best part of the opening half of the show was “Gethsemane.” During that song, the lights dimmed to a dark red. It was appropriate. The song has this darker tone to it and is very repetitive. The words “tabernacle” are sung over and over again. At the climax of the song, the crowd began moshing to the shouts of Will Toledo saying, “You can love again, you can try again!”
And Old Hits
As the night continued, Car Seat Headrest also broke out some of their older hits as well. Most notably, my favorite Car Seat Headrest song of all time, “Drunk Drivers/Killer Whales.” The crowd sang in almost complete unison with the band. Even through the random “aahs” and voice cracks of Will Toledo, we were all with him. People were holding one another, others, like myself, were trying not to cry as the voice that embodied some of their most formative years rang out in front of them.
The show couldn’t go on forever. There are so many classic Car Seat Headrest songs that they couldn’t play them all. As Car Seat Headrest said, “We love our old songs, but this is a tour for the new album, so we made up a way to combine some old songs into one.” The show came to an end with a mashup of “happy news for sadness,” “stoop kid,” “Something Soon,” “Beach Life-In-Death,” and “My Boy – Twin Fantasy.”
My Entire High School Life in One Night
This concert was an emotional rollercoaster, not only for me, but for everyone in the crowd. Car Seat Headrest for me represented the highs and the lows of my teenage years. They represented both good and bad days; late night drives and early morning commutes, they were there for it all. As I left, it felt like a definitive end to a part of my life, and their was no other band that I would have rather spent it with.
